The poor performance still clearly plays on the mind of Norris though, who quips “F***, it’s quicker than our car this!” while driving the golf buggy, after previously describing any lap with a slight mistake in the unforgiving machine as “garbage”.
When the McLaren man is then questioned during another dreadful weekend – this time at Miami – by the press over whether he would bet on himself to be at Woking in 2024, Norris finds himself unable to give an answer, instead turning to pull a face at the Netflix camera filming him from several tables away.
The pressure increases on McLaren as Brown is also questioned about Norris’s potential exit.
“A lot of the times in this sport people will put certain rumours out to try and put fractures into relationships, to destabilise teams and drivers,” he says.
“I think Lando is one of the most talented drivers on the grid,” emphasises Red Bull boss Christian Horner, who clearly covets the McLaren man. “In the right car he’d clearly be a winning driver, that’s absolutely no doubt about that.
“Can his career take another year of being in the doldrums? A driver’s career has a finite amount of time to it, and he needs to make the right decisions for him at the end of the day.
“We’d certainly be interested in him. I think he’d fit in our environment. If he’s delivering he’s not going to be short of choices – he just needs to make the right choice.”
While the McLaren drivers have the party line spelt out to them by the team’s PR officer, a main aim is clearly deflecting questions related to Norris’s future in the light of its poor car performance.
“The only other thing to flag is on Lando’s contract,” they instruct the drivers and team boss. “Zak was asked specifically if there were any exit clauses – to which we said no.
“Anything that you can say that as a team we’re cementing, we’re knuckling down, we’re not listening to any noise that’s going on in the media.”